Ebola growing like the penny in the old childhood allowance puzzle

    I remember as a child reading the Allowance Puzzle, where one was asked to pick whether it would be better to receive an allowance of a dime in January that would increase by a dime every month for a year or an allowance of a penny that would double every month for a year.
    Most children would quickly choose the dime, seeing that $1.20 was quite a lot of money compared to a penny. And they would be wrong. The child who chose to receive a penny for his January allowance would receive $20.48 in December to do his Christmas shopping. That is the power of exponential versus arithmetic growth.
    It is also the story of the Ebola virus, which has been growing in true exponential form for several weeks now: for every person who dies, two new ones are catching the disease. Most of them will die. The Washington Post has a story entitled "The Ominous Math of the Ebola Epidemic," that is scary reading.
    For some reason the "remain calm" crowd keeps telling us that Ebola isn't very contagious. Yet the Spanish nurse who became the first European case believes she contracted the disease when she accidentally or negligently touched her face while taking off her haz-mat suit. This is a description of a disease that is contagious beyond belief. A single touch can result in death.
    I don't know what's going to happen. Perhaps some unknown someone from some unknown someplace will do some unknown something to get this thing under control. Eventually (I hope) we are going to have some restrictions on movement to prevent those who know they might have the disease from just hopping a plane to Dallas. Things in the developed world may grind to a halt for a while.
    Ebola has an incubation rate of a four to 21 days and often comes on quite mildly; figure a fortnight. So what is the effect of doubling a penny 26 times (in other words a year's theoretical growth of Ebola)? I could figure it out but I'm too lazy, but Dr. Math tells us the result for doubling a penny 30 times. If you double a penny 30 times you'll end up with $10,737,418.23. Multiply that by 100 to get the number of pennies and you get 1,073,741,823, or roughly the population of Africa.
    Of course, the growth rate has to slow at some point; everyone isn't going to die. There is sometimes a tendency for a virus such as this one to act like a young fire consuming tinder in a blaze and then dying down. I think there is a better than even chance the virus will be contained with only a few flare ups that need to be tamped down.
    There is also the chance that Africa could see 500 million dead with 500 million addition corpses spread around the rest of the world. And it could be worse. The fact is that nobody can really forecast just how nasty this thing might be, because at its worst it could kill a third of the planet. I don't think it will, but it could. Nobody is going to come out and mention that, except for me. I do think the incredibly slow incubation period of this virus has lulled the public into a false sense of security.
    It is in our national interest to devote substantial resources to fighting this disease. As a nation we need to be prepared for disaster, both collectively and individually. I fear that we are not.


 

Wars, disease, natural disaster all disrupt the food supply; plan ahead or eat dirty turnips

     Shown above for your viewing pleasure is Scarlett O'Hara declaring that she will "never be hungry again." It's provided as a reminder that there have been times in our history when food has been in short supply.
    If the O'Hara family had purchased 50 cans of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup at Thanksgiving for 50 cents a can, 50 pounds of pasta for 50 cents a pound, 50 pounds of rice for $18, 50 pounds of sugar at 25 cents per pound, and so on and kept it all in an emergency supply closet they might have weathered the early days of Reconstruction with plenty to eat. And since such stockpiling inevitably reduces one's grocery bill, Mr. O'Hara would have had extra money to invest in something besides Confederate war bonds. Perhaps he would have been able to pay the taxes on Tara.
    But they didn't, and so were reduced to eating raw turnips and wearing curtains.
    Each of us has the same choices that the O'Hara family had. We can choose to pay too much for groceries, and should disaster strike be reduced to eating dirty turnips just pulled from the ground. Or we can buy large quantities of heavily discounted, non-perishable groceries when they go on deep discount. In the event of a disaster causing empty grocery shelves we can eat out of the pantry for a couple of months.
    These are perilous times. An extremist Muslim group has now established itself in a territory and declared itself a nation. These terrorists are absolutely ruthless, and if they can find a way to harm the United States, they will.
    The world is at war with Muslim extremists and the extremists are winning. Ruthlessness can be an effective weapon of war; just watch Apocalypse Now. Those who enjoy filming themselves slitting the throats of innocent people and killing Christian children will do anything they can to harm those they hate -- and that means us.
    In other news, the Ebola virus appears to be highly contagious in its current form and is spreading around the world. A Spanish nurse who treated an Ebola victim has come down with the disease despite taking every precaution. And though the disease is not believed to be airborne, many scientists now believe that it can be spread through a direct or close proximity cough or sneeze. The Ebola virus has an extremely long incubation period of up to 21 days and symptoms often come on slowly, allowing those infected with the disease to easily spread it. The checking of temperature of those boarding airplanes is absolutely ineffective as a means of screening for the disease.
    War zones are the greatest incubators for infectious diseases known to man. Look at a map and count the places where no government is truly in control. Tremble in fear, for our world has become a giant Petri dish.
    The icing on the cake is the fact that Barack Obama has refused to police our nation's borders, allowing those carrying deadly diseases and terrorists to enter the country at will. The terrorists who will launch the next attack are likely already in this country, and now there is nothing we can do to stop them.
    One final worry: there is about a one-half to one percent chance per year of a major natural disaster that will be so severe that it will completely disrupt our food distribution network. Scientists say it is a matter not of if, but when we will suffer a Carrington Event that will likely cripple our entire electrical grid, and perhaps disable virtually all motor vehicles.
    And let's not forget the possibility of a major earthquake in the central United States. One of the largest earthquakes in continental U.S. history was the New Madrid earthquake of 1811. There has been a dramatic increase in earthquake activity along this fault line and Wal-Mart has started to prepare for a New Madrid disaster.
    Enough gloom and doom for now. The fact is that everything is probably going to be just fine.
    Of course, if one were to be forced to play Russian Roulette one is "probably" going to live. That doesn't make it a good idea. "Probably" simply isn't good enough. We need to hope for the best but spend a small amount of time and effort preparing for the worst.

Now is a good time to buy lots of deeply discounted groceries -- just in case

    The Ebola epidemic has now reached the United States. Given that our Jackass-in-Chief has refused to secure our nation's borders, more cases are no doubt on the way.
    I have no doubt we will be better able to contain or slow the spread of the disease than the impoverished countries in Africa where people are dropping like flies. But the fact is none of us know how bad things will get.
   I don't stockpile food in the way that survivalists do. But I do buy large quantities of regular food items when they are on sale: Ragu for 99 cents, pasta for 50 cents a pound, cheese for $3.00 per pound, sugar at 25 cents per pound, and so forth. The photo above shows items that I've purchased at very deep discount -- half to two-thirds off. For example, I've got about 60 bottles of Ragu, 50 pounds of pasta, 80 pounds of sugar, and so on. If disaster strikes I'll have a little something to eat. If not, I'll save on our grocery bill.
    Ash wanted to know why I had the Hefty storage bags in the photo. "You can't eat Hefty bags," he declared. And indeed you can't. But they are great for food storage, which is part of ensuring enough to eat. Several years ago, while still living in Kentucky, I was able to find Hefty storage bags on sale for $1.50 with 50-cent coupons attached to the boxes. The coupons were doubled, bringing the per-box price down to 50 cents. I bought 50 or 60 boxes, and in fact just this year found myself running out of some sizes.
    We probably won't have a massive ebola epidemic; neither the sun nor a nuclear bomb is likely to cause an electro-magnitic pulse; we aren't likely to have a massive earthquake. But in a world where bad things might happen it's better to have food and not need it than to need food and not have it.
    I make a point of not spending "extra" on survival food; I just buy lots of stuff on sale. But given that ebola has now made landfall I'm likely to buy a little powdered or shelf-stable milk, a little extra cooking oil, and so on.
    Beat the rush -- stock up on non-perishable groceries now; because if disaster strikes food will not be available. As they warn at the dog track, "Don't be shut out."